Yes, and the best possible reason to redirect all federal school funding, plus topped up direct funding via an appropriated GST, (the state's share and responsibility) rolled out as a means tested education endowment that the recipient parents alone control or direct according to their private or public preference!

This pragmatism would eliminate most of the administration costs currently levied by 7 veritable armies of fee demanding double handling state bureaucracies!? Which given the school halls rollout debacle, as a cogent cost adding historical evidential example, could add another 30% to available and pragmatically directed education purpose funds!

It's still the same single bucket of available, if vastly better directed, money!

And sure to make state based pollies and bureaucrats scream blue murder and invent all manner of spurious reasons to continue with the current for them, gravy train, or cost adding counterproductive control? And you won't have to hold your breath!
Alan B.

A far simpler solution is for the Fed government to get out of school funding altogether. Let's the state manage it, and there will be less public service jobs duplicated in Canberra.

I must take exception to mention of the "school hall debacle", which I know is off topic, but I cannot let this canard pass without refuting it. Across Australia the school halls programme was a resounding success and met all the goals it was intended to achieve.
Every school now has a hall in which the school can assemble, a hall which can be utilised by the school as a money-raiser or as a community centre, a small army of tradesmen was given work, steel and brick and tile construction was maintained and a very large sum of money was pumped into the national economy. At a time when the rest of the world was in either a recession, or depression depending on how you viewed things, Australia's economy stayed buoyant. Every other developed country, except Poland, had 4 or 5 quarters of negative growth.
School hall fiasco!? No way! Inspired forward thinking that avoided double digit inflation and unemployment, last seen when John Howard was a trainee Treasurer, much like Joe and Scott. Let's have NO more of this totally incorrect rewriting of history.

Thanks Collete but to get an appearance on Q & A otr the drum you have to continue to blatant lie that private schools get more funding than public schools. You get the like of Caro who simply perpetuate the myth. The useless hosts never pick up on such nonsense as they want to keep their overpaid positions.

BB: Comparing the cost of private school halls with that of state managed education; the widely reported difference was as high as 30% higher for some states, who just had to cream off their customary management fees? And let's have no more of this dictatorial historical revision by a patent labor stooge? Yawol?
Alan B.

So those multi-million dollar Federal Government handouts are just to buy textbooks and not for things like additional boatsheds or the resurfacing of playing fields?

According to My School data, between 2009 and 2014, combined states and federal government annual funding for independent schools rose by $1911 per student, in increase of 30.3 per cent, not adjusted for inflation.

Funding for public schools rose by $1539 per student, an increase of 14.6 per cent.

For Catholic schools, funding rose by $2332 per student, an increase of 30.2 per cent.

Also according to AEU analysis, in 2014 independent and Catholic schools had more resources (recurrent funding) per student than public schools, including fees and other income.

It found there was $17,604 annual funding per student in independent schools, $12,998 per student in Catholic schools, and $12,779 per student in public schools.

I see no reason why taxpayers should have to subsidise what is essentially "a lifestyle choice" for parents to educate their children outside the standard school system.

Private means private.
You want to send your kid to a private school then you pay for it. Stop bludging off the welfare teat.
If you can afford to pay private school fees then you dont need money from the government.
Stop the private school welfare dependency!

@Rache... The AEU figures on their own tell very little. If you unpack the reasons behind the increases you find out so much more. The AEU of course doesn't want anyone to actually understand this as it doesn't suit their agenda. They are masters at the art of misleading information.

Firstly, percentage increases are relatively meaningless on their own. If the increase is off a smaller base (as it is for independent schools) then the % is likely to be greater than if it's off a higher base. Secondly, the rate of increase in enrolments in independent schools of students with disability and other disadvantage has for some years been significantly higher than the overall enrolment increase - and per student funding increases as a result, as it should. The data will show this to be the case. When independent schools are enrolling more of these students it's disingenuous to complain that their per student funding increases at a higher rate.

Thirdly, why is a non-government school any more a "lifestyle choice" than a government school? If I have two children and one attends the local public school but the other goes to a non-government school because the 'standard' school system isn't going to meet their needs properly, why should I as a taxpayer be further penalised for that? The government is already getting a good deal by only having to partially fund that child’s education.

The notion that school education funding should only be for government provider is ridiculous - we don't do it in health, childcare, tertiary, public transport and other core services so why should school education be sacrosanct? Non-government schools provide a public good/benefit and by choosing a non-government school I'm saving YOU and other taxpayers as the govt doesn't have to fully fund my child's education. I'm totally OK with that. But as a tax-paying citizen I absolutely expect that the govt will make SOME provision towards my child's education regardless of the type of school they attend.

As Spencer points out, percentage increases mean nothing without their starting points and finishing points and there is nothing unusual abut private bodies receiving public money to achieve pubic purposes. Indeed, I have never heard all members of the public education lobby happily accept public money that goes to the private GPs, the private pharmacies and the private childcare centres that they use.

I will add two points.

The first concerns the AEU, which goes on and on abut Gonski and yet failed to make submission for a specific funding model to that review. The AEU, by which I mean its rank and file membership, has failed to win back the conditions stolen from teachers by the use of retrospective legislation in 1992. In 2004, instead of insisting on the return of the stolen conditions, the AEU even agreed to an increase in average secondary teaching loads of 70 minutes, thus reducing the time allowance pool to zero minutes. In 2010, it failed to take the opportunity presented by the Gonski review to propose a funding formula for schools derived from an explicit staffing formula based on decent working contains. Now, it stands by while schools increase the number of teaching periods in defiance of the 2008 agreement on the length of the instructional day.

The second concerns the common international practice o publicly funding non-government schools. Australia spends $US6137 per student in a non-government school. Austria spends $US7373; Belgium, $US9773; Denmark, $12012; Finland, $US9266; Norway, $US12155 (OECD Education at a Glance 2015, Table B3.3) – and that’s not the full list. 25 of the 28 countries for which data is given fund non-government schools, 11 of them more generously than Australia.

@mikk... do you have any ACTUAL argument or is repeating a few mindless slogans on a topic you clearly barely understand sufficient?

First, the 'private' in private schools actually means 'not owned by government'. Second, why should only government schools be funded for providing this core service? Non-govt schools provide the same public benefit (i.e. their students are members of 'the public' after all), deliver the same curriculum and must comply with government legislation to be an education provider. We fund private providers in numerous other core service areas and choose which ones we access (health, childcare, transport etc), why should it be different for schools? Funding private providers of important public services reduces the cost burden for governments, that's why they do it.

Third - students attending government schools are fully funded and those at non-government schools only partially funded, so surely those on the 'welfare teat' must actually be those getting the most funding? And that would have to include the 50% of high income earners whose children attend government schools. They're clearly wealthy and can afford to pay for private schooling and don't need money from the government, so why don't we force them to send their kids to a non-govt school? That way we can justify taking all of their funding away since they obviously don't really need it.

The vast majority of 'private' schools and the children attending them are not wealthy. That's a fact, not a mindless slogan. Do you really think that 35% of our population is 'wealthy'?

"And sure to make state based pollies and bureaucrats scream blue murder and invent all manner of spurious reasons to continue with the current for them, gravy train, or cost adding counterproductive control? And you won't have to hold your breath!
Alan B."

Perhaps another solution is to take the corporate welfare out of the private education system or take the private out of the education business industry so the parents concerned pay only once, one or the other.

Why should my taxes go into corporate welfare?

Spencer,

I agree that the government should make some contribution to your child's education (and they do) but it should be an equitable one.

It should be no more than what they pay for the basic public system and it's the amount that's what appears to be in dispute.

The taxpayer already provides a standard basic range of services and to go beyond them is a personal and thus a "lifestyle choice".

You can catch the same universally subsidised bus or train to work as everybody else but it's your choice and your own responsibility if you decide to travel via a chauffeur driven service. I shouldn't have to pay extra for it.

Overall, I agree with the sentiment of the funding of private schools. I went to a private and public school and the (private) high school I went to, had a school building fund parents could pay into (optionally).

Those who want funding cut to private schools don't realise that it will be students who will suffer, particularly those who do not want to study, maths 1,2,3 etc. The limited subject options they have available will simply be cut and these people will be left worse off.

People (at school levels) do not get to decide what school they go to. This is decided by the parents. I also believe states should get out of school funding and policy decision making. They simply play politics with the issue at the expense of others, and are simply aiming for benefits at their own selfish party political level.